Housecat Update

A Friday Hodgepodge

I realized the other day that we've had our two long-haired Siamese cats, Lucinda and Seymour, for a couple of years now. Here's an update...

1. Lucinda, who likes to sit on my desk during writing time, has taken to announcing her arrival by stretching up, propping herself on my chair, and tapping me on the shoulder.

I then pick her up and place her on my lap, so she can hop up to her spot.

2. Seymour loves pets and belly rubs, but tends to roll over onto the ground quickly. That's not great for my back, so I've taught him to climb up to the top of the litter cabinet for a session after I say Pets?

No. This is not Lucinda. So far.

3. Lucinda isn't the pet fiend that Seymour is, but she will ask for a session now and then. It's usually at some optimally awkward point during my evening routine -- which she always follows me around to supervise.

She emits a quiet, gravelly and high-pitched meow that sounds almost pathetic when she wants her pets and back scratches.

4. Seymour is a wonderful cat, but he has some kind of skeletal or neurological deficit that affects his movement. (Our vet has said that pinning it down would be very expensive and that there would be little we could do for him. She added that, "so long as he does 'all the cat things,' he'll be fine.")

Fortunately, Seymour does do "all the cat things," but sometimes a little oddly, as if he has had to teach himself some of them.

He does a few of his own things, too. My favorite is that if he hears something unusual enough that he wants the lay of the land, he'll stand on his hind legs like a meerkat and look around.

-- CAV

Rescuing Clarity From 'Perfect'

Miss Manners fields a question about perfect, the latest word to get beaten to death from over-/misuse as a synonym for okay.

I found the wording of the question unclear, but the situation made sense: The questioner, being in charge of bookings for a client, ended up double-booking because the way many people use perfect could mean book it or okay, thanks in such a context.

I appreciate Miss Manners's commiseration, especially as I, too found amazing and awesome annoying in their heydays, but I have long taken to the practical solution offered by the first commenter:

No matter what waffling around is done on their part, you need to pin them down before the conversation ends: "So you would like to book for Oct. 13 at 9? I'll put you down for that, then." Leave no room for misunderstanding.

I did this myself just a few days ago when I was hiring movers for some heavy objects we need to move up- and downstairs at home.

My contact may have been puzzled by my need to clarify, but I now know I won't be waiting around on the day, wondering what some guy who said perfect on the phone actually meant.

-- CAV

Populist Tariffs Very UNpopular

Writing for the Washington Post, Cato's Scott Lincicome reviews polling data about Donald Trump's favorite economic and foreign policy cure-all, and finds that Americans don't care for tariffs.

These responses show that many voters willing to support tariffs in the abstract oppose them when asked to pay less than they're actually paying today. Republicans are no exception: Their support dropped from 70 percent to just 39 percent when asked to pay $1,000 per year to fund their guy's signature policy.

The Cato survey's results are hardly outliers. In nearly every major poll over the past year, tariffs drew 55 to 65 percent opposition or disapproval. Even more respondents, 70 to 75 percent, believed that tariffs raised prices. State battleground polls showed similar findings. This month, CBS-YouGov found that likely voters preferred a congressional candidate who opposed the president's tariff approach by a 26-point margin. And, per a September Fox News poll, GOP support for tariffs has declined 21 points since "Liberation Day" last year, with only "MAGA Republicans" still saying the measures help the economy. [links omitted, bold added]

It is reassuring to know that most adults have enough on the ball to want to put a stop to this policy, and it sounds like it is affecting congressional races. Lincicome quotes the Democrat in Iowa's toss-up Senate race as promising an "end [of] the chaotic tariffs that are sending farms toward a 1980s-style farm crisis."

Uh-oh.

Lincicome draws three lessons from the polling data, which I summarize as follows:

1. Trump's running on the economy and embracing tariffs was a colossal blunder;
2. Policies that sound good to voters in the abstract get rejected when their negative consequences become so apparent; and
3. The conventional wisdom that tariffs are popular and electorally necessary is wrong.

Lincicome ends with a rhetorical question about when the President and Congress will "catch up."

By the sound of it, the Democrats, of all people will help them do so some time after November.

-- CAV

Senate to Miss Regulatory Slam-Dunks?

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Senate has a rapidly-closing time window to pass what it aptly calls "The Save America From California Act," thereby preventing some onerous climate regulations from that state from hamstringing the rest of the country:

California's regulations have national scope since manufacturers typically design products to meet the state's standards. Other states can adopt California's standards, as many have its electric-vehicle mandate and quota regime. Cue the [Congressional Review Act (CRA)], which lets lawmakers overturn a regulation with a simple majority vote of both chambers and the President's signature.

As a bonus, the law also prohibits agencies in the future from promulgating rules that are substantially similar to those that are overturned. Republicans last year used the CRA to potent effect by overturning California's electric-vehicle and truck mandates as well as some 20 other Biden rules.

Now they have a narrowing window of opportunity to use the CRA to kill permanently the California rules blessed by the Biden EPA that require "zero emission" commercial vessels and small off-road engines, lawn mowers and so on. House Republicans passed a CRA resolution overturning the commercial vessel rule this month, and now the Senate can finish the job.

The clock is ticking down on chances to repeal another few other awful rules, as well.

Perhaps they could take a short break from freaking out about "furries" and pass this before they lose their majority, thanks to being dragged down this November by the loon they chose to keep around, instead of removing from office.

-- CAV

No. You Aren't Eating a Credit Card Per Week.

I will admit that I tend to tune out claims from certain quarters to the effect of Something you've been doing for decades is an imminent danger to your health!

Nevertheless, I am aware of at least a dull drumbeat about microplastics and their potential to cause biological harm. I see the subject as one worthy of further study, but not as one worthy of such measures as banning single-use plastics, a favorite cause of many leftists.

Plastic -- and individual freedom for that matter -- are so valuable that any such ban would require extraordinary, conclusive evidence as to the harm of plastic that, for example, its careless use would pose a negligent or reckless threat to other individuals. (And even then, banning it might still be the wrong anwer.)

Ridiculous claims about the amount of plastic we allegedly take in from our environment or the harm that it causes do not foster a careful consideration of the scientific facts or of what (if anything) to do about them.

Faye Flam debunked two such ridiculous claims about microplastics in a piece titled, "The Real Microplastics Problem Isn't in Your Brain."

My favorite was the way-too-easy-to-remember canard to the effect that we're eating the equivalent of a credit card's worth of plastic every week:

Before the plastic spoon image, there was another alarming statistic: that the average person ingests enough plastic each week to make up a credit card. That claim was based on a 2019 study that used several models to estimate that the average person consumes either a tenth of a gram, three-tenths of a gram, or 5 grams (the credit card amount) per week.

[Chemist Mark] Jones noted that other scientists questioned the assumptions in that model, and a couple of studies found that the 5-gram figure was about a factor of a million too high, meaning it would take roughly 23,000 years to consume the amount of plastic in a credit card. Nevertheless, the credit card estimate continues to be propagated in popular media, policy circles and other studies. [bold added]

I like to imagine that some of these other scientists started off from the same thought I did when I first heard that: "I think I'd notice if I ate that much plastic."

Joking aside, Flam asks the same question that too many fail to ask in similar circumstances:

Is it OK for scientists, science journals and journalists to be less rigorous or critical of extraordinary results if they raise awareness of serious problems or otherwise contribute to the greater good?

Flam doesn't directly answer, but she does allude to a cautionary real-life tale:

Mark Jones, a retired chemist who has independently studied microplastics, drew my attention to the Nature follow-up, which the journal did not publicize as heavily as it had promoted the initial findings with a splashy press release. Jones said he's deeply concerned about scientists and journals failing to maintain high standards of evidence. He is worried about eroding public trust, as evidenced by the rising resistance to essential vaccines. [bold added]

Good. Too many scientists and public figures whose advocacy depends on science have been happy to sow panic rather than appeal to reason. It is good to see that some are beginning to understand the value of credibility.

The public may not be as scientifically literate as we would like, but that does not mean they are stupid -- or that they will not notice they are being treated that way, forever.

-- CAV

Four Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

***

1. A few weeks ago, I suddenly became unable to back up my blog with a script I've used for that purpose for over a decade. My suspicion was that something had changed on Google's end, and that I might need to change the script.

But then I asked ChatGPT about what I was seeing and it raised another possibility: A change at Google caused a bug in the wget utility I relied upon to surface. A bit of digging around showed that I was indeed running an older version of wget that had the problem which manifested in my script failing.

Since the end of support for that version of Linux was coming up in April, anyway. I installed the latest version on an old laptop and voilà, the unchanged script worked again.

Hooray! AI saved me time figuring out what the problem was, and helped me realize I should go ahead and upgrade.

2. In an attempt to move my desktop to a newer OS, I had all kinds of trouble, including at one point having trouble installing even a very simplified version. (And, after I did, I wasn't able to use the machine for very long.)

AI really helped here, again. This time, it saved me time and research by finding log entries that indicated possible causes.

After performing some diagnostics, I concluded that a component integrated with the motherboard had failed and was corrupting data.

Ultimately, AI helped me identify a hardware problem that required me to replace my desktop, and guided me in finding a solid, inexpensive replacement.

3. I like using certain web pages like stand-alone applications -- Google Calendar and a weather site I like for example. The --app option for Google Chrome is a great way to get this effect with a display that omits the browser's UI elements.

It's been around for a while, but I migrated away from the browser I had been using for that purpose, so I was unaware.

4. Three cheers for antilock brakes! I was driving my son home on a rainy day when an incompetent driver swerved in front of me and came to an abrupt stop for a yellow light.

I am sure I would have rear-ended him without the help of that technology.

-- CAV

'It's really hard to leave your kids.'

At Ask a Manager, Alison Green pays tribute to her mother on the second anniversary of her medically-assisted death.

I recommend reading the whole thing because it's about an important issue, but perhaps in a private setting, because it is touching, especially if you have experienced or are experiencing a similar situation.

For now, I leave you with two excerpts, the first of which makes it clear that this was a very good person:

My mom had always lived life on her own terms, so it wasn't surprising to anyone who knew her that she was determined to die on her own terms too. From the time my sister and I were very young, she always taught us that you should think for yourself and choose a life path without concern for what other people thought, as long as you felt your choices were ethical ones.

She also taught us that when something is wrong in the world, you speak up about it...

The second is a clarion call:

When I think about how differently her final months would have gone if she didn't have the right to make her own medical choices, I'm so angry that she could have been forced to suffer. She had terminal cancer; it was always going to end with her dying, no matter what anyone did. Whose interests would have been served by forcing her to linger in pain for a few extra months?

She viewed her ability to minimize her own suffering as a great gift, one that brought her immense comfort, and so it brought us comfort too.

I hate that she is gone, but I love that she got to die exactly the way she lived: saying, "This is not right, and I'm going to work to change it" and making her own decisions right up until the end.

In honor of my mom's memory, I hope you will push your legislators to give terminally ill adults legal access to medical aid in dying, no matter where they live.

Having lost our own father to terminal illness, my brothers and I all support legalizing medical assistance in death, and as I grow older, and wonder if I will succumb to my grandmother's Alzheimer's, I would like to be able to exercise that option myself.

Our lives are our own. It is evil to force anyone to endure great pain or anything else they find intolerable ahead of the end of their lives, and it is a shame that the law does not already universally recognize that aspect of one's right to life.

-- CAV